Again – Yes. Absolutely. Conflict is the primary issue here. If I had spent that money on an new car or a grand holiday it would be relatively difficult to reconcile my own selfish actions with my denigration of greedy-self-interested-money- grabbing-bankers. In this case there would be conflict that I may well seek to resolve by some sort of self-justification or even more vitriolic advocacy of the evilness of bankers. But giving the money to charity means there is no such conflict.

So what the money is spent on is highly relevant to whether or not there is any conflict to be resolved.

Dr A writes:

And I gave an example in which there was, in fact, conflict, and therefore the diagnosis is quite properly placed.

You also asked “What difference does it make what you spend the money on?”. I have told you what difference it makes. It makes the difference between conflict or lack of it.

Dr A writes:

Really, I don't see where you're going with this.

I’m disputing the emphasis on symptoms that has so far been prevalent in this thread. There has been a lot of “Oh look there is a bunch of people who hold an idiotic opinion. They must be suffering from cognitive dissonance.” Or “Oh look that person has changed their behaviour after considering the facts. They must be suffering from cognitive dissonance”.

Now I’m not disputing that people do change their behaviour as a result of seeking to resolve cognitive dissonance. And you have done a good job of exemplifying the sort of idiotic beliefs that cognitive dissonance can result in. But there are numerous other reasons people hold idiotic beliefs and numerous other reasons people change their behaviour. If we actually want to look at the psychological phenomenon of cognitive dissonance we need to look for evidence of actual internal conflict and not just at actions or beliefs that may or may not be caused by such conflict.

Again – Yes. Absolutely. Conflict is the primary issue here. If I had spent that money on an new car or a grand holiday it would be relatively difficult to reconcile my own selfish actions with my denigration of greedy-self-interested-money- grabbing-bankers. In this case there would be conflict that I may well seek to resolve by some sort of self-justification or even more vitriolic advocacy of the evilness of bankers. But giving the money to charity means there is no such conflict.

It might. It might not. There probably are people so morally scrupulous that they always give their own money to charity instead of other people's. Good heavens, I'm one myself.

But sure, we can imagine someone who feels no moral conflict in stealing money to give it to charity, a letter-day Robin Hood, knock yourself out. However, in the example I gave, there is a conflict. That was stipulated, it's part of the example. It is not a critique of the example that you can imagine a different person who has different thoughts and different motives and therefore does not feel conflicted, any more than it's a critique of my saying that an elephant is an example of a mammal to reply that you can imagine a hat-stand which is not an example of a mammal.

Do you not agree that there are degrees of CD? that it is more of a spectrum than a black and white issue?

Curiously, I find it difficult to consider any difference of opinion not causing some degree of CD, no matter how small the difference is. The reason we debate is because of conflict between opinions. The greater the difference in opinions, the more involved the debate gets trying to resolve it.

Your example with Dr Adequate actually involves two situations, (1) getting the money and whether to return it or not, and then (2) if not returned, then how to dispose of it, both of these are resolved by subsequent behavior. First, in response to the new information, you decide to not return it to the bank; second, you raise your belief in you being a good person (which is in conflict with your decision not to return the money to the bank) by giving it to a charity instead of keeping it.

A two step process that leaves you feeling like you have "done the proper thing."

Do you not agree that there are degrees of CD? that it is more of a spectrum than a black and white issue?

There is a spectrum of anger too. But not every fist clenched is a sign of anger is it?

RAZD writes:

The reason we debate is because of conflict between opinions. The greater the difference in opinions, the more involved the debate gets trying to resolve it.

So when in debates you accuse others of cognitive dissonance you are actually merely pointing out that there is disagreement and highlighting that all disagreeing parties are suffering from CD including you?

Why don't you say that then? Rather than perennially accuse everyone who disagrees with you significantly of relentlessly suffering from CD such that every debate you partake in becomes a RAZD led discussion about who is or isn't experiencing cognitive dissonance. Why don't you just say "We disagree. We are all, very much including myself, experiencing cognitive dissonance here".....?

RAZD writes:

Curiously, I find it difficult to consider any difference of opinion not causing some degree of CD, no matter how small the difference is.

If cognitive dissonance is just a natural and inevitable symptom of disagreement experienced by all those disagreeing then it barely seems worth pointing out that people are experiencing this on a debate board does it?

As I said before.....

I think you use accusations of cognitive dissonance essentially as a debate tactic. A method of deflecting from the issue at hand by instead relentlessly focussing on the (supposed) mental state of your opponent.

For what it’s worth I think you would be a better debater if you stopped accusing everyone who disagrees with you significantly of being in a state of cognitive dissonance.

I have thought about this thread during my long and tedious trial with chemo-therapy -- a rather vicious protocol that had me oscillating between knocked down on my knees puking on the floor to fairly normal able to ride a bike behavior (recovery over a two week period, getting "well" just in time for another knock down session). The medication is trying to kill parts of me but leave most (essential?) at least alive enough to recover. Intentionally facing near death is an interesting experience.

It seems to me that there are several factors that lead to cognitive dissonance. Perhaps others can add to this list, but I will start with two that I feel are most critical:

the difference between a persons belief\opinion and the information that contradicts\counters it, and

the emotional attachment a person has for their belief\opinion.

Learning\reading\education\science tend to direct a person towards beliefs\opinions that are consilient with objective empirical evidence, thus reducing potential cognitive dissonance due to evidence contrary to belief\opinion. There is not much need for emotional attachment to such evidence congruent beliefs\opinions, especially in science where tentativity of conclusions are necessary.

Group (mob?) behavior, however, tends to direct a person towards beliefs\opinions that are common to the whole group regardless of factual basis, due to the (emotional) need to conform and fit in to the group. Repetitive assertions of certain beliefs\opinions within a group setting can cause - and reinforce - an emotional bond to those beliefs\opinions out of proportion to their factual basis (this is how propaganda and advertising works).

Jingoist nationalism is a case in point: there is no rational reason to favor one country over another, but strong emotions can be created.

quote:Jonathan Haidt has described this phenomenon using William Gibson’s notion of a consensual hallucination, and the thing to focus on here is the sense of collective identity that comes from defining your beliefs in opposition to the other guy’s. It’s connected to the way the discourse of the right has become hermetic and self-referential. I’m not thinking just of Fox News or Limbaugh, but of online discussions and Twitter. There’s a group of Michigan researchers who have been doing large-scale statistical analysis of tweeting, and they’ve found that conservatives are more densely connected, retweet each other much more frequently, and stick to a narrower range of topics than liberals do.

That creates the bubble environment that licenses politicians to make these off-the-wall charges, then answer the people who challenge them with, “Well, we won’t let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers,” or that marvelous remark Jon Kyl made after claiming that 90 percent of Planned Parenthood’s services were abortions, “It was not intended to be a factual statement.” You’re not going to hear that sort of thing from Democrats. Not that they’re above a little mendacity now and again, but they tend to be more traditionalist about it.

Cognitive dissonance tries to resolve things by searching for reinforcing beliefs from others in order to make the existing belief seem more valid. In a large enough group this becomes rather incestuous and self referential in terms of where information comes from that is trusted, and the narrower the sources of information become, the narrower the belief is.

The more broadly based a belief is, the more information is sought from all sources to test the validity of the belief, and the smaller the sources of information that are not trusted.

An interesting if nauseating example of this is the people who believe in "crisis actors".

On the one hand, they think that nothing should be done about gun violence whatsoever because then we'd all become gay transsexual communists or something ... the details are not clear, but they are very vehement about them.

On the other hand, it is hard to contemplate another school shooting and not think that something ought to be done.

These two moral imperatives of action and inaction can be perfectly reconciled by the supposition that no school shootings ever happen.